Junkers 290 III: Did the Ju 290 Make Secret Flights to Atlantis?!?

(This is part of a series of posts on the Ju 290. Part 1 here, Part 2 here.)

At the start of this series, I said I wanted to share everything I'd learned about an interesting but obscure airplane, the Junkers 290. This includes the comet tail of crazy history following it. If 'Flights to Manchuria' were the fact-ish sorta head of this comet, then this post is all about the mist of bad thinking and sensationalism stretching behind. But before we drift off entirely, though, there's one more bit of real history we can do, and cover the Junkers 390. In previous posts I've been mentioning the Ju 390 without getting into details, and in many ways it was the Ju 290 program squared. If the Ju 290 was a long range low production aircraft that many hopes were pinned to, then the Ju 390 was a very long range aircraft that even more grandiose hopes were pinned to that never left the prototype phase. While that means the program had almost no real-world impact whatsoever, I think the planning surrounding the aircraft is pretty interesting, and a good snapshot as to what might have developed has the German aircraft industry been less messed up. It also is necessary, since its capability and obscurity make it even better than the Ju 290 for being the central character in many a France to Mushroom Kingdom flight.

X: The Junkers 390 from the Perspective of a Soulless Minion of Orthodoxy

Most people reading this will have at least heard of the Amerika bomber project, a catch-all term for Nazi bombers capable of reaching the United States, bombing it, and then returning. On the face of it, it is surprising that even big dreamers like the Nazis thought about doing this, as their attempts at producing a modern strategic bomber were in perpetual disarray. A transcontinental bomber was a whole order of magnitude more difficult, and a positive pipe dream given the messed up state of the Nazi aviation industry. Still, the Nazis persisted with the idea, even after they ended production of everything but fighters and jet aircraft. The reason was simple - it gave Nazi leaders the fantasy that they could knock the United States out of the war. Earlier on in the war it was presumed even one strike against New York would so unnerve those decadent Jazz listening democrats so much they would immediately sue for peace - in the late war, the Nazis upped the ante somewhat by imagining Nazi nuclear bombers razing the east coast to accomplish the same thing. (The Nazis were not anywhere near having an actual atomic bomb, no more than they had a transcontinental bomber, but you can't stop them from dreaming.)

Still, even the Nazis with their almost magical view of technology, had to modify these dreams slightly in the face of the huge engineering challenges. Most Amerika Bomber designs assumed ( the Nazis being the eternal optimists that they were) that the war against all non-Germans would go so well that Fascist Spain and/or Portugal would enter the war on the Axis side, or at least become friendly enough to the Axis to allow Germany to use the Canary Islands, or the Azores as a staging area for attacking North America. This allowed the Nazis to dream of a Amerika bomber deployable before, say, the early 1950s. Even with this unlikely concession, most of the Nazi efforts in this direction remained paper projects: a joy to aviation nerds like me, but about as useful to Nazi victory as those "hang in there, baby" posters Hitler kept putting up.

Only two Amerika bombers actually existed as functional prototypes: the Me 264, and the Ju 390. When the initial specification was issued by the RLM in early 1942, someone at Junkers had the quite sensible idea. Instead of developing a whole new airframe, why not use a suitable existing design (IE the Ju 290)  and simply expand the wings and fuselage? Compared to the alternatives, this approach was incredibly fast and cheap:  not only had most of the engineering work already been done in the Ju 290 program, the new airplane could use existing Ju 290 tooling instead of needing bespoke machinery. In April 1942, the Ju 90B V6 returned to Dessau, where over about a year it was made into a six-engined super Ju 290 with a 150 ft wingspan - the first Ju 390.

Using two inner wing sections was fairly useful in that it gave you a extra set of landing gear.

In these two pictures you can also make our the round cabin windows; showing that this aircraft was made from a Ju 90.

A Ju 290 had a wingspan of 42.00 m (137 ft 9 in), and a length of 28.64 m (93 ft 11 in). The Ju 390 had a wingspan of 50.30 m (165 ft 1 in), and a length of 34.20 m (112 ft 2 in). These modifications worked well, and the Ju 390 had a projected range (at least) of the Ju 290 A-9: 9000 km, with some sources placing it close to 10,000 km. This modification may have also given the 390 an expanded cargo lift capacity - though this is quite murky. Sources vary on this, saying anywhere from a 10% payload boost to something like a 75% increase. (As the 390 gained only six meters, or 18 ft in length for aerodynamic stability reasons, I'd err on the side of caution for that estimate.) Speed and altitude remained the same as the Ju 290. It should also be remarked that flying from the Azores, the Ju 390 as a bomber could have  reached New York City, as well as Philadelphia, some parts of New England, the Canadian Maritimes, and Newfoundland. This is not too shabby for a World War 2 airplane.

A 9000 km range from the Azores gets you the NE United States...

But from FAGr 5's base, it will only get you Newfoundland.

At any rate, the new prototype pleased the top Nazis extremely when it first flew in late 1943. An immediate order was placed for 25. Like a teenage girl sketching out a whole life-plan with the cute boy she just met, the Nazis imagined a whole new series of aircraft based on the Ju 390. Like the Ju 290, the 390 was soon seen as the start of a whole family of aircraft - getting the Ju 290 B upgrade and being used for pretty much everything the fuselage could do: from a bomber to a transport. That makes the unrealized Ju 290/390 family a fairly incredible production efficiency for Nazi Germany - had these plans come to pass, nearly all of the Luftwaffe large aircraft functions would have been met by one airframe that scaled in cost and complexity depending on mission, and one that furthermore used identical tooling and identical spare parts.The 390 also would have been a natural choice for flights over Siberia to Japan.

All of these plans, of course, never came off. The first prototype, Ju 390 V1, flew extensive flight tests, and even was brought to Mont-de-Marsain to be examined by FAGr 5 crews. It also was rumored to have been a part of aerial refueling experiments, though I don't have good information on this. (As the Azores gambit seemed more and more unlikely, the Luftwaffe turned to thinking of the possibilities of in-flight refueling for their transcontinental bomber instead.) The fighter emergency program in the spring 1944 ended Ju 290 production, which naturally ended 390 production as well. In late 1944, the Ju 390 V1 returned to the Junkers HQ at Dessau where it was cannibalized for spare parts, presumably to keep the remaining Ju 290s operational. What remained was blown up in 1945 when American forces approached Dessau. The other prototype has an even murkier history.  The Schrodinger's cat of Nazi aircraft, the Ju 390 V2's existence is a superposition, existing and not existing at the same time. Post-war, the Head of engineering at Junkers testified to the British that a Ju 390 V2 was started - but was broken up in the factory after the fighter-emergency program ended 290/390 production. Contrary to this, flight logs identify a Ju 390 V2 being flown several times by Luftwaffe test pilots. My main source for KG 200 also claims the Ju 390 V2 was accepted into KG 200 - and then the paper trail for it abruptly ends. The fact that the evidence is conflicting is not especially surprising, given the chaos of late war German aircraft production - but the whole thing is something of a tempest in a teapot. According to the pro-existence camp's evidence, the Ju 390 V2 flew very little: only flying a few times before being destroyed to keep it out of Soviet hands.

XI: The New Adventures of Junkers 'n Friends

So: the Ju 390 was a prototype that was very capable, and is notable because it existed, unlike nearly every other Amerika bomber aspirant. Not surprisingly, its rumored career is much more spectacular than its real life one.

 In 1944, a British intelligence report states that the Ju 390 while visiting FAGr 5 was used for several very long distance flights, including one that got within 20 km of New York City, and returned with photos of the great metropolis. Where this report came from is unknown. After World War 2, these reports seemed to have inspired an argument in a British Aviation magazine, where two letters a year apart claim that these flights were made twice. The first one claims the Ju 290 circled New York airspace for an hour, and the second letter sticks closer to the intelligence report, saying that the flights reached viable distance of NYC. At the same time, a men's magazine did a story on these claims. This magazine was contacted by two ex-RAF officers who claimed to have proof of these flights in the form of reports and photographs taken during that flight. As you'd expect, the reporter asked if he could see this evidence. The officers replied "You sure can!" and were not heard from again.

That's pretty much the total of the real-world evidence. Despite the fact that the case was as flimsy as a  leftover crepe, the claim of Ju 390 flights to New York was repeated in books after, and because of this, serious aviation historians have looked into the claims to see what they could find. The result, like the search for flights to Manchuria evidence, have turned up nothing. Looking at the capabilities of the aircraft in question was somewhat more useful, as they demonstrated that the Ju 390 (or the Ju 290 A-9, which had a similar capabilities) had nowhere near the range to fly to New York City and return from France. Karl Kössler and Günter Ott, who wrote the definitive work on the Ju 290 family (sadly now long out of print and never translated from German) calculated the fuel payload needed to make the flight was triple that of the Ju 390's maximum takeoff weight. In addition, pesky historians that they are, they point out that Ju 390 V1 was never at Mont-De-Marsain during the time that the flights are attributed to have taken place. (In their reckoning, the Ju 390 V2 superposition aircraft was only completed in late 1944.) Historian Kenneth Werrell had a look at the numbers in the paper I posted last time, and discovered that while the Ju 390 V1 could have flown from France to St. John's, Newfoundland and returned, (pretty damn impressive for bodged World War 2 technology) the several thousand extra kilometers necessary to get down to New York made the flight "most unlikely."

"I caught a fish this big!" (indicates with wings)

 There is also an intelligence report of the Ju 390 making a reconnaissance flight to Cape Town, and then returning. The problems with this story are similar to the New York flight - that to fly there and return was far beyond the capacity of the airframes in question, and there's no evidence of these flights happening. In addition to that, you could ask why the Nazis would, during a time when the Reich was under constant air attack and critically short of aviation fuel, make these flights in the first place. The only possible reason would be for propaganda purposes, and I'm not sure even the Nazis would spend enough fuel for a flight of 6-8 single engined fighters in an attempt to take photos of faraway enemy cities. (Hitler forbid New York City was foggy that day the flight was made. )

The simplest explanation for these stories, and Baumgut's tale from last time is very simple: that these were all part of a deliberate misinformation campaign by the Nazis. The pilots of FAGr 5 had seen the Ju 390, and were closely connected with German Military intelligence. Thus, they were in a position to try and confuse Allied Intelligence efforts with tales riffing off of existing operations that were possibly known to the Allies. The Cape Town tale was lent some plausibility by KG 200 operations in North Africa, and Ju 290 pilots were in fact involved with plans for flights to the far east. This was turned into a further grey area in that the Ju 390's capability was unknown to the Allies. This tall tales were of course in a background where Nazi Germany really was astounding the world with its technological advances. So as a low risk move to confound the Allies, it makes perfect sense.  Germany had also succeeded (inadvertently) before in this sort of thing: a 1944 German Propaganda film aimed at German audiences lied about the existence of new super tanks. This was taken as evidence that these new types actually existed, a rare misstep by Allied Intelligence. So! Make up stories about how far our air force can reach! Maybe that will cause the Allies to hesitate...

And they had to do something: the Nazi propaganda swing effort was backfiring after certain events made it really, really, funny.

XII: Anna Kreisling

Of course, none of this has stopped (or even slowed down) creation of even more outlandish adventures for the Ju 290/390. If you are reading this, then you are likely at least somewhat familiar with people who believe in conspiracy theory, and you know the Cardinal Rule: do not argue with them. Why this is a coworker once expertly summarized for me. This coworker is one of those people who thinks the moon landing was fake. When I learned this, before I could even get past "grimly amused", she just looked at me and said "I know what you're thinking, and you should know that I don't care about facts or reason."

Which I really can't add anything to. 

Anyway, "secret history" is a kind of disease especially common in World War 2, as it remains a historical event that engages a lot of public interest, and often  involves the Nazis, who were the prototype for modern pulp fiction villains. I imagine these things get started by people wanting to sell books or bad documentaries to Discovery and the History channel, and then they get repeated and fervently defensed by, well, people who don't care about facts or reason. (Major props, by the way, to whomever is editing the Wikipedia entries on the Ju 290 and 390 - they have been admirably diligent in editing out the nonsense theories and explicitly refuting the more plausible ones addressed by serious scholars. They have been so diligent, in fact, they are web pages who often start their conspiracy mongering with "the truth that Wikipedia editors can't handle!" As Freud once said: "Many enemies, much honor.")

Anna Kreisling is one of these inventions. As a general pattern, "secret history" stories start with real confusion or plausible stories that didn't happen. Then these tales are improved upon to make them more spectacular and interesting. Anna Kreisling is the result of this iteration carried on for a few generations - a character partially based on real things (but more spectacular) and partially based on previous generations of bullshit (but more spectacular.) First made up by a journalist in Ohio, (who claimed that the very elderly Kresling was his neighbor) the Legend of Anna Kreisling has become very popular with the "no facts or logic" set on the internet. Here are some absolutely true and not at all made up things I can tell you about Mrs. Kreisling, the "White Wolf of the Luftwaffe":

*She has blonde hair and blue eyes, and is beautiful! Like a movie star! (Regardless of circumstances, this exact simile is always used.)

So like this girl, except racist to the point of being fine with genocide.

* She landed Ju 52s inside Stalingrad during the doomed airlift (quite a feat considering tanks frequently had trouble moving about the city streets.)

* No photographs exist of Anna Kresling, as she is "married to one of the world's richest men."

* She was part of the most daring reconnaissance flight of World War 2, flying a Junkers 390 over Upper Canada (IE Southern Quebec and Ontario), Michigan, Ohio, and New York. This flight was possible because the Ju 390 was twice the size of the B-29, and had a range even larger than the post war B-36;

* Also if that's not enough range for that flight, she flew in the Jet Stream out to the States and back to France again, a singularly amazing feat on several counts, since it assumed 1) a B-36-like altitude capability that the unpressurized Ju 390 did not have, and 2) has the jet stream reversing direction.

* Complete lack of evidence is of course evidence of all these things actually happening, since the evidence was systematically suppressed by the Nazis/the SS/Freemasons/the CIA etc...

*You can see what a wide ranging information blackout there is on this woman, as she has met several US Presidents, including Bill Clinton, but there is no photographs or evidence for this.

And it spins outward from there. There are made-up interviews with Kreisling, and a bunch of people arguing with skeptics that Anna Kreisling is totally a person. Naturally the sheer vehemence of people saying Kreisling exists has far eclipsed any discussion of what this super accomplished Nazi  Starlet miracle pilot actually did. It's worth mentioning that Anna Kreisling is not only made up, the name Kreisiling isn't even a German name in Germany or Austria, it being some mysterious wurst of German-ish sounds. (If you were doing the same thing with Canadian names, I'd love to know what you'd end up with: possibly "Marshall MacDonald" or "Shinaia Mapletree".) This weirdness infects most places where the Ju 390 is discussed online. For the most part, this is a quite sedate web site, mostly a online aircraft reference. The entry for the Ju 390, however, is something else: a twelve hundered page argument between the true believers and the skeptics about the various adventures of Kreisling and her friend the Ju 390. The fact people are now trolling the thread with fanfiction involving Edward Snowden's adventures in Russia, where the Clinton machine, Bill and Hillary, have come to assassinate Snowden and are having a whole series of adventures on the streets of Moscow that resemble "Smokey and the Bandit." The whole Anna Kreisling thing is so bizarre and idiotic I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was some sort of deliberate prank from somethingawful.com or 4chan.

File photo: Anna Kreisling, 1954

More well read/less credulous minds will notice some parallels with somebody who actually existed, Hanna Reitsch. She was a famous avatrix in the Third Reich, and aside from being a fearless and highly skilled pilot, she also landed a Fieseler Storch on the streets of Berlin during the Soviet siege. She was not movie star gorgeous, though, and therefore not worth talking about.

In conclusion, while intrigue and speculation are somewhat to be expected when thinking about the Ju 290's/390's career, keep it inside the bounds of sense, even if it is a little anticlimactic sometimes. Also, maybe we should use "Anna Kreisling" as the term for sensationalist bullshit in history?